A nice profile ... and yeah, the amount of time spent gathering info and writing it (not to mention the amount of access to Butkus and his family) is stunning to see 40 years later.

I cracked up at this bit of detail from the Wrigley Field sideline:

As the half ends, a ruddy-looking gray-haired man who had been enthusiastically jeering the officials on the Cuozzo call slumps forward in his seat. Oxygen and a stretcher are dispatched immediately and the early diagnosis is a heart attack. He is rushed from the stadium, but the betting among the side-line spectators—an elite group of photographers, friends of the athletes and hangers-on—is that he won't make it. They are right; the man is taken to a hospital and pronounced dead on arrival. A spectator, watching the game from behind a ground-level barricade, says, "If he had a season ticket, I'd like to buy it."